Selected Lead Articles from The Dawn | Page 6

duty of those parents to support them. There are mothers who are almost content to see their sons idle at home, so greatly do they apprehend disgrace and trouble when the boys are abroad and unwatched, and though education has, in many cases, a happily mollifying effect, the balance is against the men in all classes. A city man complained the other day that of his six sons, he had little hope of either; another mourned the ruin of his only son, now a confirmed drunkard. Hundreds of others dare not enquire what is the evening occupation of their sons, being well aware that tippling, gaming, or compassing the ruin of some poor girl, form their customary employments. Through all the layers of society there is such a preponderance of evidence on the side of the women that it is possible to make a comprehensive generalisation and say that parents beget sorrow with their boys and comfort with their girls. To this conclusion we invite the attention of all writers upon "women", in order that everyone who studies social questions at all, may aid in the effort to level men up to the moral average of women. Consideration might also be well spent on the cause which has rendered prevalent among men, though absent as a rule, from women, such vices as bibulousness, gluttony, sensual appetite, and a morbid taste for gambling. It may seem to anyone newly introduced to the subject a very singular anomaly that drinking, low language, and gallantry, should be considered not altogether derogatory in one sex though utterly debasing in another; but this peculiarity of popular vision which gives two opposite views of the same thing, is an ancient habit. We cannot now discuss the cause of the moral inequality we allege; it will suffice to point out that though custom and inherited opinion have habituated us to judge the actions of men and women by different standards, the inherited squint does not justify perpetual ignorance as to the side where reform is most seriously and urgently needed.

Boycotting The Dawn
The Dawn Volume 2, Number 6. Sydney, October 5, 1889
ASSOCIATED LABOUR seems to be in its own small way just as selfish and dictatorial as associated capital. The strength which comes of union has made labour strong enough, not only to demand its rights but strong enough also to bully what seems weak enough to quietly suffer under petty tyranny. We have a notable example of this in the boycott which the Typographical Society has proclaimed against The Dawn. The compositors have abandoned the old just grounds on which their union is established, viz: the linking together of workers for the protection of labour, they have confessed themselves by this act an association merely for the protection of the interests of its own members. The Dawn office gives whole or partial employment to about ten women, working either on this journal or in the printing business, and the fact that women are earning an honest living in a business hitherto monopolised by men, is the reason why the Typographical Association, and all the affiliated societies it can influence, have resolved to boycott The Dawn. They have not said to the women "we object to your working because women usually accept low wages and so injure the cause of labour everywhere", they simply object on selfish grounds to the competition of women at all. Now we distinctly assert that we do not employ women because they work more cheaply; we have no sympathy whatever with those who employ a woman in preference to a man, merely because they think she will do as much work for a lower wage. We will be the first to aid the formation of trades' unions among working women, whether they be compositors, tailors, or any others, so that women who try to earn a living honestly may win as good an income in proportion to the quantity and quality of their work as men can do. In this object we know we have the sympathy of our readers, and as to the boycott we only need their co-operation to entirely neutralise its effect. A great many women have written to us at various times wishing to be able to help us and begging to know how. There is now an opportunity to help us, and the woman's cause generally, with pronounced effect, and we can give a comprehensive reply to all our kind well-wishers. The aid can be given by those who have no time to write for us, no time to attend women's meetings, no time for anything but the duties of their own household. It can be given us in the most powerful form, merely in the course of the necessary expenditure of your weekly income, whether that be